One of my favourite spots in Toronto is the Toronto Islands, that lovely patch of land right in front of downtown Toronto, separated by just a sliver of water. So close, yet so far from the city’s hustle and bustle. One of the biggest events on the Islands is the Toronto Dragonboat Festival, a family event organized by the Toronto Chinese Business Association. In addition to being a great entertainment event, the Dragonboat Festival is also a big fundraiser for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, so it’s not just fun, it’s also for a good cause.
So two days ago I headed off down to the waterfront and took the ferry across to Centre Island. At 10 am when I left things were still fairly quiet and the line-ups hadn’t started yet. People with bicycles, strollers, coolers on wheels, all equipped for a full day on the Island, were making the trek across the bay to enjoy the excitement of the Dragonboat Race and to bask in the serenity of this island sanctuary.
The ride on the ferry affords absolutely the best view of Toronto’s skyline and at $6 return it is one of the most affordable sight-seeing options in Toronto. All the skyscrapers, the CN Tower, the round shell of the Skydome (now called the Rogers Centre) and the outline of the historic Royal York Hotel come into focus when you look back at the city. Toronto’s skyline is one of the most recognizable images in the world.
After a fifteen minute ride I set foot at the ferry dock on Centre Island and started walking towards the so-called Alan A. Lamport Regatta Course, a stretch of water frequently used for rowing events of different kinds. People had already set themselves up all over the lawn, ready for a picnic. Onlookers were following the races. A food court was set up where various vendors sold different types of Oriental delicacies and the Multicultural Village provided cultural displays, arts and crafts demonstrations, as well as various activities for children. One of the stands had an amazing assortment of folded paper crafts including some beautiful decorative dragonboats. The lady at the stand told me it takes her a whole day to craft some of these masterpieces.
A real dragon boat actually is a long and narrow boat, powered by paddlers, and the boat is usually adorned by decorative Chinese dragon heads and tails. Usually a dragon boat will have a crew of about 22 people, with one drummer or caller facing the paddlers, and one steerer at the rear of the boat. Dragon boats are thought to have come into existence more than 2500 years ago in south central China and have a long history in Chinese rituals and celebrations.
The races had already started at about 8 am Saturday morning. Dragon boat racers were coming down the water channel, 6 boats at a time, in the qualifying heats for the finals. This year there were about 6,000 paddlers competing over two days. About 200 teams participated in more than 100 races over this past weekend and teams came from all walks of life: banks, community groups, colleges, universities and other educational institutions, hospitals, technology and pharmaceutical companies and many more.
I strolled past the grandstand and past Centreville, Toronto Islands’ amusement park, over the bridge to the other side of the race course with the intent to connect with some dragon boat teams. The first team I ran into was a group of high school principals and vice principals that get together every year to participate in the race and raise some funds for breast cancer. These educators were a very welcoming and enthusiastic bunch, and started chatting with me. Their coach Glen gave me further background about their training routine. He explained that around February the whole team goes out to public swimming pools and starts stationary paddling. Then around April they actually get into the water near Ontario Place and train twice a week. Some teams train as many as five or even eight times a week. Glen and his friends indicated that dragonboating is a supreme stress buster, providing welcome relief from the pressures of the classroom.
One of his team members indicated that I should definitely catch one of the most interesting teams in the race: a team of breast cancer survivors. So I started hunting in search of this team and I walked into the “Athlete’s Village” which had a variety of tents set up for the convenience of the athletes.
Finally I found the team, “Dragons Abreast”, a group of women ranging in age between 35 and 75, who had all survived breast cancer. All were dressed in pink t-shirts to draw attention to the cause of breast cancer. I started talking to the group and found out that some of the group’s members have travelled to various destinations all across the world to promote the cause of breast cancer awareness. Some of them have recently travelled to Capetown, South Africa, and this year a number of them are participating in an international dragonboat race in Singapore.
Dianne, their media coordinator, explained that they race to promote awareness among younger women to participate in early breast cancer detection programs. She added that in the past many women were told to avoid strenuous upper body exercise after breast cancer surgery. The paddlers at Dragons Abreast on the other hand firmly believe that the exercise involved in dragonboating actually has significant health benefits, both physical and psychological.
One of the team members, a lady by the name of Pam, had recently participated in an initiative called UpKili: an event where 30 breast cancer survivors and their friends climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for Breast Cancer Research. In total more than US$120,000 was raised. Pam told me that she ended up having an accident during the climb and had to be rescued and taken down by a team of sherpas. Nevertheless this was one of the most exciting events in her life time, being part of this unique initiative for this great cause. And despite her injury she ended up taking part in a safari even after the climb was finished. I was really happy to have connected with this group of courageous women who had overcome so much and are now taking their inspiring message to audiences across the world.
The official opening ceremony was going to be held at noon so I raced back into the main festival area. A group of politicians and dignitaries was assembled on the stage and after a number of speeches and welcoming remarks by the President of the Toronto Chinese Business Association, the ribbon cutting ceremony was held. A performance of the Lion Dance and the Eye-Dotting Ceremony of the Lions provided an authentic Chinese cultural flavour to this event. This was followed up by the Waist Drum Dance, organized and performed by the Chinese Professional Women Association of Canada.
I then strolled the grounds and by this time the food court was quite busy. Every special event has its special characters and just after the opening ceremony I saw this group of people strolling determinedly across the lawn, obviously a dragon boat team that had just finished their race. Their leader was pulling an imitation version of a multi-functional dragon boat that was spewing smoke, blowing soap bubbles and blaring Michael Jackson dance tunes through the built-in stereo system. The group was marching at a pretty fast clip and I had a hard time trying to keep up with them and taking pictures at the same time. Finally they settled in the shade by the water and I asked one of the team members what this was all about. He explained that his team was called “Kindred Spirits” and that they represented the Kinsmen in Bolton. They had indeed finished their last race of the day and were now ready to relax and celebrate, and their special miniature dragon boat was a symbol of their determination to have a great party.
The colourful characters kept coming. I ran into two bagpipers from the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner’s Own “Pipes and Drums”, a group of uniformed and civilian volunteers, who make appearances as ambassadors for the O.
P.P. all throughout Ontario. These two gentlemen were just enjoying a pizza when I came up to them and asked them about their upcoming performance. They said they would be performing at about 1 pm, “somewhere in the shade”. Both of them were dressed up in full Scottish regalia, kilt and all, wearing the colours of the Ontario tartan.
Of course I also had to ask them the key question that is burning on everybody’s lips when they encounter a Scottish bagpiper. The officer kindly responded and said that the answer totally depends on the question:
- If the question is “What is worn under the kilt?”, the answer is “nothing is worn under the kilt, everything is in great working order”.
- If the question is “What are you wearing under the kilt?”, the appropriate answer is “socks and shoes”.
That meant my curiosity remained unsatisfied, but I got a chuckle out of the answers which no doubt must have been given dozens of times before to deflect nosy queries. I only had about another hour on the island before I had to head back to the city, so I put on my inline skates and started gliding southwards through the gardens on Toronto Island which feature a fountain, several flower beds and reflecting ponds. South of there are locker rooms, the Island Bicycle Rental building as well as the Island Pier. West of this area is Manitou Beach, a sandy haven for avid sun worshippers. Further west from there is Hanlan’s Point, Toronto’s only clothing optional beach.
I had to get back to the mainland, so I started rollerblading in the other direction, eastwards towards Ward’s Island. Along the way I found numerous spots with canals, inlets and sailboats set against the backdrop of the city, indeed some of the best places to take in Toronto’s skyline in perfect serenity. Ward’s Island itself houses a community of permanent residents, many of them artists.
I ran into one of these talented folks, who was fabric painting on t-shirts in the middle of the lawn. Christopher Pinheiro is a Trinidadian-born multi-disciplinarian artist. His description on the Toronto Islands website lists him as “actor, dancer, model, masquerader, soup-chef and textstylist”. We had a brief chat about his fabric art as he was just painting a red maple leaf which would later be adorned by yellow and blue sections. Christopher is obviously an important member of the Toronto Islands artist community.
At 2:15 I caught the ferry back to the mainland from Wards Island together with probably another 20 or 30 travellers. Arrival on the other side was a different story: the ferry docks and the public area outside the ferry buildings were completely full with hundreds of people, lining up all the way out to Front Street. I guess everyone wanted to catch a piece of the Toronto Islands on this gorgeous day…

After my visit of the Newcomers Club I took a taxi to the Museo de la Ciuadad which is located directly about the Tourist Office of the City of Cuernavaca. There I connected with some colleagues from the Ideal Language School where I had been taking language classes this past week.
The Museum of the City was the location of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a special exhibition by two South African photo journalists, Dr. Peter Magubane and Omar Badsha. The photo exhibition was appropriately called Dos Lentes – Dos Visiones – Una Experiencia, “Two Lenses – Two Visions – One Experience”.
Dr. Peter Magubane was born in a suburb of Johannesburg and found himself drawn to photography early on. He was inspired by the photographers of Drum Magazine and started his work in 1955 with his first job covering the convention of the African National Congress. In 1958 he was the first black person to receive a photography prize in the country. He was arrested in 1969 while covering the protests outside of Winnie Mandela’s prison cell and was prohibited from practicing his profession for the next 5 years.
Dr. Magubane is an independent South African reporter and photojournalist whose credits include UNICEF and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. He is the only black South African photographer who was able to enter and document the events in other African countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He also worked as a photographer for the Rand Daily Mail. He gained international recognition during the June 16, 1976 uprising and won various prizes in the fields of photography and jouralism.
Omar Badsha was born in 1945 as part of a Muslim Gujarati family. His grand-parents had emigrated from India to South Africa towards the end of the 1890s. Badsha is a celebrated artist and self-taught photographer and played a very important role in the South African fight for human rights. During the 1970s he was part of small, but select group of union activists and in 1987 he and his family moved to Cape Town to create the “Center of Documentary Photography” at the University of Cape Town.
He is one of the founding members of the Cultural Workers Congress and was also a key member of the legendary independent agency and photographers collective called Afrapix. This agency played a critical role during the 1980s in documenting the fight against apartheid. Currently Omar Badsha is working on a retrospective exhibition and educational project about the history of South Africa.
A woman by the name of Pooveshnee Reddy from the South African embassy came out to introduce the exhition. She cut the ribbon and gave us some background on the exhibition. The photos were very gripping, images of apartheid, racial segregation, a young black boy – dead and covered by a newspaper, a photo collage consisting of a poor black shantytown and an upscale neighbourhood just blocks away really gave us a taste of what apartheid must have been like. But there were also images of celebration, when apartheid came down, and an image of a boy jumping through the air. A reminder that sometimes the happiest moments can be experienced by the people who have the least…..
After this stirring photographic exhibit I took the bus downtown, where I exited at the Zócalo and ate in a little local restaurant for $5. Then at 3 pm I headed to the Palacio de Cortés for a guided tour together with 3 members of a music quartet from Prague (Czech Republic) who were in town for a concert tonight.
The Palacio de Cortés is a former residence of Mexican’s conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who invaded the country in 1519 and in three short years had conquered it and along with it destroyed the Aztec empire of Moctezuma. With his palace he left a lasting legacy in Cuernavaca, which was originally called Cuahnahuac (“Place of great trees”) by the local Tlahuica Indians. The Spaniards renamed it Cuernavaca (“Cow’s horn”) since that was easier to pronounce.
The Palacio de Cortés is also called the Museo de Cuahnahuac and is located on the southeast side of Cuernavaca’s Plaza de Armas. Cortés began building the structure in 1526 and lived in the palace for several years until he returned to Spain in 1540, never to set foot in Mexico again.
The building was later used as a prison, a Catholic Church and also as the seat of the Morelos State Legislature. The building’s salons display a variety of pre-Hispanic and colonial artefacts including carriages, furniture, farm implements, even a suit of armor. One of the exhibition rooms holds a Indian mummy in an open casket, well-preserved and a somewhat eerie sight. On the top floor there is also an arched gallery holding one of muralist Diego Rivera’s most renowned works: the mural Historia de Morelos, Conquista y Revolución (“History of Morelos, Conquest and Revolution”) which is intended too summarize the history of the State of Morelos.
After this historical education, I went to an Internet café, and finally took a bus to the Plan de Ayala residential area where I picked up my orthotic inserts to help me with my inflamed ankle. The ability to walk is crucial for a travel writer/ photographer like me, so I am hoping that these orthopedic inserts will do the trick. Right across the street I went into a supermarket and bought some bananas, mangoes, a bottle of pop, Doritos, and went back to my comfortable accommodation at La Nuestra. By 7:30 pm I had arrived, taken off my shoes and was relaxing by the pool, listening to the wonderful song of tropical birds.
I read a little but I was physically exhausted. The last few days have been a whirlwind of experiences and I definitely need a bit of downtime. I think I am going to sleep a bit before I write up today’s stories…

A newly arrived person might be struck by the style and panache of the impeccably dressed business men sipping an aperitivo in an urban piazza, by the flair of women’s overall “look” as they hurriedly go about their errands or by the surprising bouquet from a glass of full-bodied, local wine at an Enoteca; but one must realize that, as in art, music, and even love-making, the beauty of the outcome is predicated on the enjoyment of a series of precise details; a fact that renders each moment precious.
Every day, Tuscans do what they love and lovingly carry out what they do, moment upon moment. Details are carefully blended so there is nothing “out of tune.” Life is in sweet balance and experienced to the fullest.
As in the past, everyday tasks, craftsmanship and art coexist and flow into one another (consider that when Michelangelo began his career, most sculptors were considered craftsmen): One passion inspires another; art begets literature, literature begets music, music is the creative impetus for food that is too good to be true….
One bite of food can be a lesson in history and sociology: Traditional dishes are made with fresh, local ingredients and based on simplicity rooted in la cucina povera (poor or peasant cooking); often, they reveal the identities of the various cultures or groups who imprinted their culinary marks on Tuscany over time – Etruscans, Romans, exotic invaders, traders, monks, etc.
“A tavola non s’invecchia mai” (you never grow old at the table)! Tuscany is a place of simple, impeccably fresh food and is blessed by a generous sun, rich, mineral earth and abundant water. Organic is common in Tuscany – lovingly organic! At summer’s end, the flavor of a ripe tomato (a treasured gift from the New World) smells fragrantly sweet and explodes in your mouth like a symphony of consecutive, sensual bursts until you actually taste the fiery rays of sun, the rich, native soil and the perfumed air that caringly and patiently ripened the fruit to perfection. The approach of the organic farmer is “tantric;” he does not work his land – he makes love to it.
The respect and care with which the laws of nature (seasons, moon risings, winds, and sky signs) have been observed for thousands of years yield the lustily flavorful crops. Wheat, grapes and olives (or bread, wine and olive oil) – three basic and astonishingly simple ingredients – are the cornerstone for thousands of unforgettable dishes. The sumptuous aroma of traditional, unsalted Tuscan bread made from stone-ground grains, natural yeasts and baked fresh in a wood-burning oven permeates the morning air. When slightly stale, it is a perfect base for soups and salads. The talented, proud food artisans continue to create many varieties of hand-made cheeses, including fresh or aged Pecorino Toscano (Tuscan goat cheese) that cannot be resisted, especially when accompanied by fresh, perfectly ripened fruit and an alluring glass of local buon vino. The village salumieri still salt their own hand-cured prosciutto and hand-made sausages taking pride in their closely guarded, secret family recipes. Your mouth waters at the thought of the smooth, toasty chestnuts; varieties of throat-soothing, velvety honeys; woodsy, aromatic, fresh porcini mushrooms; abundance of intensely-flavored wild game and fresh, abundant Tyrrhenian seafood! Amorously crafted meals are slowly relished at restaurants, locande, trattorie and homes, in even the most remote locations.
Visit http://www.ToscanaMia.biz to learn more about travelling to Tuscany, Italy.
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Serenella Leoni helps her clients experience the true Italy by providing them with elegant Italian villa rentals, Italian wedding assistance and sharing the latest news, advice and tips on the Tuscan lifestyle. Visit http://www.ToscanaMia.biz to learn more about Tuscany, Italy as a travelling hotspot for your lifestyle.

After booking our discount flight tickets to New York, we decided to investigate what New York musicals and solo performances were showing that were not on Broadway, and to our delight we found a great selection offering something for everyone.
Saved, showing at the Playwrights Horizons 416 West 42nd Street, follows good girl Mary and her domineering best friend Hilary Faye. They are starting their senior year at the top of the social food chain at the American Eagle Christian High School, that is until Mary’s boyfriend tells her he thinks he’s gay. Then Jesus appears in a vision, and Mary heeds his message “to do everything she can to help him,” her good deeds are met with some dire consequences, and Mary is forced to question everything she’s ever believed.
Naked Boys Singing, features eight gentlemen throwing caution, and their costumes, to the wind to perform this original musical revue. Showing at the New World Stages 340 West 50th Street, this contains full male nudity, gay themes and some strong language. Over at the Minetta Lane Theatre 18 Minetta Lane, Adding Machine, a darkly comic and heartbreakingly beautiful musical adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1923 play. Telling the story of Mr. Zero, who is replaced after 25 years at his company by a mechanical adding machine, in a vengeful rage he murders his boss. Called a “brilliant little musical” by the New York Times.
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, showing at the Westside Theatre, Upstairs 407 West 43rd Street, celebrates everything you’ve secretly thought about dating, marriage, romance, lovers and in-laws but were afraid to admit. At the New World Stages 340 West 50th Street, Altar Boyz tells the story of a struggling Christian boy-band riding the wave of America’s latest fascination with religion. These self-appointed apostles of pop bring their soul saving tour to New York City, armed with catchy melodies, freaky moves and product in their hair.
We also found two great solo performances, My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish and I’m in Therapy at the Westside Theatre, Downstairs 407 West 43rd Street, is one part lasagne, one part kreplach and two parts Prozac. The show is written by Steve Solomon and is filled with hilarious stories about Steve’s wacky family and the crazy characters that he meets on the road. Whose sole purpose it seems, is to drive him into therapy, and it looks like they have succeeded.
Straight Up With a Twist at the Players Theatre 115 MacDougal Street, takes a look at one family, as they try to figure out who this straight guy is who says: “Don’t call my house during the football game…that’s when I vacuum!” LA Weekly: “Richly comic, zinger lines! Pick of the Week!”
Well that’s a tour of the musicals and solo performances showing, off New York’s Broadway, at present, more details at www.travel05.co.uk